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Linux on USB Stick

Carrying your private OS with you on an encrypted USB stick is very useful.

Here are my personal notes how I did this. I have written them carefully, however I assume no responsibility for them.

What you need:

Computer with Ethernet connection ¹⁾
Fast and large USB 3.0 Drive (Sandisk Extreme 128GB) (INSTALLSTICK)
Any USB Drive with 4GB (STARTSTICK)
Debian Linux 9.0 Live iso copied to a second USB Stick, any brand will do
A current full backup of the computer you are using

Installing Debian on a USB Stick with encryption

Download ISO https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
Copy ISO to the STARTSTICK using dd
Boot your computer with STARTSTICK. You may need to enter the BIOS and choose a temporary startup device and/or add the usb stick to the boot options. If the usb stick is not recognized, it may help to try different usb ports.
When STARTSTICK boots, choose graphical install
Plug in INSTALLSTICK
Go through the installation questions, choose “Full Disk Encrypted LVM”
Make sure that you choose the correct drive, e.g. Sandisk Extreme 128GB
The INSTALLSTICK will be prepared for encryption and erased, which will take some time.
In the question for GRUB install again make 100% sure that you select the proper drive.
After that, remove the STARTSTICK and boot into your new system.

Post install work:

To connect the computer to a wireless network, you will probably need to install non-free drivers.
To optimize the performance of you USB Stick:

¹⁾

wifi probably won't do because of missing drivers. You would have to copy those to the Installer stick

Discussion

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